Publicação
(Read)dressing the Victorian past in the filmic adaptation of A. S. Byatt’s Possession
| Resumo: | This chapter addresses Neil LaBute's 2002 film adaptation of Byatt's novel Possession (1990), and its recriation of Victorian England. In this text it will be demonstrated that heritage films such as Possession show a thematic preoccupation with class and gender and are implicitly aware of their inability to re-create the past even as they journey into it through a visual emphasis on historical accuracy. The focus is on the ways the past acts upon the present, and vice-versa, in LaBute’s twenty-first century discourse about the nineteenth century. How do texts and ideas of the past act upon the present? Does the way that we read the past say more about us than it does about any “real” past? Do we speak the past, or does the past speak us? |
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| Autores principais: | Mendes, Ana Cristina |
| Assunto: | Byatt, Antonia Susan, 1936-..... Possession Adaptation Cinema Victorian culture |
| Ano: | 2013 |
| País: | Portugal |
| Tipo de documento: | capítulo de livro |
| Tipo de acesso: | acesso aberto |
| Instituição associada: | Universidade de Lisboa |
| Idioma: | inglês |
| Origem: | Repositório da Universidade de Lisboa |
| Resumo: | This chapter addresses Neil LaBute's 2002 film adaptation of Byatt's novel Possession (1990), and its recriation of Victorian England. In this text it will be demonstrated that heritage films such as Possession show a thematic preoccupation with class and gender and are implicitly aware of their inability to re-create the past even as they journey into it through a visual emphasis on historical accuracy. The focus is on the ways the past acts upon the present, and vice-versa, in LaBute’s twenty-first century discourse about the nineteenth century. How do texts and ideas of the past act upon the present? Does the way that we read the past say more about us than it does about any “real” past? Do we speak the past, or does the past speak us? |
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